By various measures, larger credit unions have recently had stronger financial performance than smaller credit unions, indicating that these institutions face large and pervasive economies of scale. This Economic Letter uses data from the 1980-2004 period to show that this performance difference...

Mergers tend to improve credit union cost efficiency. When the acquirer is much larger than the target credit union, target members benefit in terms of lower loan rates and higher deposit rates, while acquirer members see little change. When merger partners are more equal in size, these benefits...

Over the past few decades, assets in the credit union industry have grown considerably and have grown relative to banking. As with banking, the credit union industry has experienced considerable structural change that, in part, involved failures. While the data on failures in the banking...

This Economic Letter shows that, in contrast to banks, larger credit unions, on average, have decidedly lower average costs and higher net incomes, as we might expect in the presence of important economies of scale. It further notes that these economies of scale put pressure on the credit union...

While credit unions have been able to convert their charters more easily since the late 1990s, two conversions of very large credit unions--over $1 billion in assets each--in 2006 have put the issue on the front burner for the industry. ; This Economic Letter outlines some costs and benefits to...